5 ms·

GNU Taler is (for Europeans at least) the most promising system, because it is controllable (at least on the merchant side). The users themself are anonymous,

• R0b0t1 5y ago
  The most promising? What do you mean? BTC and XMR already work and don't have the downsides of Taler. Usability could be improved for those, yes. Outside transparency is not a benefit. Most people I've talked to about crypto don't see the opacity as a detriment. They do not trust the government or tax policy. Most of these people are also generally happy to pay their taxes but can see reasons when they would want to hide their behavior.
  • sdze 5y ago
    Gnu Taler does not rely on a blockchain. BTCs blockchain is rather power inefficient.
    • numlock86 5y ago
      > BTCs blockchain is rather power inefficient. Pfff, a single transaction is only 1700kw/h (or 820kg of carbon dioxide) with as little as 90g of electrical waste left behind on average. From an economical standpoint that could be much more ... if you are to sell energy or equipment of course. /s
  • lottin 5y ago
    This shows how little cryptocurrency users know about how governments collect taxes. The government doesn't go around checking people's bank accounts in order to get tax information. This would be terribly inefficient. What they do instead is pass laws that require employers to disclose how much they pay their employees and to collect taxes on their behalf, before the taxpayer even receives the money. Therefore private transactions and 'unconfiscatable' money does nothing to prevent governments from collecting taxes, at least as far as ordinary people are concerned.
    • kybernetyk 5y ago
      That’s an edge case for payroll taxes/income tax of employees. All other forms of taxation can be avoided by the common man.
      • pasquinelli 5y ago
        that edge case is most of the tax the common man pays
      • lottin 5y ago
        Not at all an edge case, but there's no point discussing this. If you think you can avoid all other forms of taxation, I say go ahead and try it!
      • qeternity 5y ago
        > All other forms of taxation can be avoided by the common man. Lol, the common man isn’t really subjected to other forms of taxation. Most people pay two kinds of taxes: income tax, and sales/use taxes (with property tax being a distant third). The most common taxes are difficult to dodge.
    • tifik 5y ago
      You are talking about income tax. There are other taxes, e.g. capital gains tax, that most crypto makes much more difficult for governments to collect.
      • lottin 5y ago
        All income that you receive from or is routed through an institution will be handled in the same way. This likely includes interest, dividends and capital gains as well. Then there's VAT which is also collected by businesses on behalf of the government.
        • tifik 5y ago
          Exactly. Crypto largely removes the need for institutions, and with anonymous wallets it would be very difficult to link a specific person to one. Edit: I am again talking about capital gains. Yes, the money has to come from somewhere, but you can break the traceability easily by using non-kyc means of getting crypto. E.g. bitcoin ATMs.
  • throwaway77770 5y ago
    > Outside transparency is not a benefit. Most people I've talked to about crypto don't see the opacity as a detriment. They do not trust the government or tax policy. I think his point is: Bitcoin explicitly takes a libertarian position to taxation by making it hard to tax. While most crypto adopters may be libertarian, the majority of people are not and so the libertarian position will deter adoption.
    • R0b0t1 5y ago
      Opponents to cryptocurrency are a very vocal "think of the children" minority as far as I can tell. In the US there seems to be broad interest mostly gated by technical difficulties. As noted many times here, anonymous crypto is only as bad as cash.
• LeoPanthera 5y ago
  The important point about Taler is that while the payer is completely anonymous, the payee is not. This makes illegal uses of it much harder.
• brabel 5y ago
  A payment system that's not driven by a unicorn , is "libre", cannot be used by criminals because business payments are visible while customers are anonymous, and helps combat tax avoidance?! Nah, will never fly.
  • eurasiantiger 5y ago
    Will never fly because corporations will not adopt something that helps them pay more taxes.
    • lxgr 5y ago
      Corporations don‘t evade taxes by hiding consumer payment transactions.
      • eurasiantiger 5y ago
        That’s certainly true. However, making up transactions is almost core to money laundering, and laundromats don’t like to pay taxes for obvious reasons.
    • sdze 5y ago
      So corporations won't adopt double-entry accounting then? ;) Corporations have ways to move money around legally. There is a regulatory gap... They do not need to hide money illegally.
• kybernetyk 5y ago
  GNU Taler is trash as it has built in taxation. Something crypto tries to abolish as taxation is theft.
  • martin_a 5y ago
    wow! much edgy, such badboy!
    • SpaghettiCthulu 5y ago
      I take it you're happy paying taxes for shit that doesn't benefit you, like useless school systems?
      • martin_a 5y ago
        Paying taxes also makes sure that when I turn the tap on, there's drinking water coming out of it. I don't think that's a bad use case for tax money.
        • kybernetyk 5y ago
          Like the water in Flint? I’d prefer a private commercial service for that. At least you wouldn’t have to live with contaminated tap water for 5 years because of incompetent government run monopolies.
          • martin_a 5y ago
            Third world countries like the US might handle drinking water quality somewhat different, I acknowledge that. So maybe roads are somewhat easier to grasp. They are paid for by taxes and while you could outsource that to private parties, having to pay a bribe each kilometer seems rather complicated to me.
            • kybernetyk 5y ago
              Wow much edgy
• ddtaylor 5y ago
  GNU Taler is not a real cryptocurrency.
• young_unixer 5y ago
  With Monero you can still let the government see your transactions, by sharing a view key with them. And you also have the possibility to avoid taxes if you want. So, it's a superior system because it allows both use cases ;)